Some good ideas from Lightstalking on Street Photography

Lightstalking has some good tips for people considering street photography. Street photography is taking pictures of people as they go about their daily lives generally in an urban environment. Street photography is usually not, or sometimes minimally posed. One name strikingly absent from the article is Vivian Maier. The Posthumous discovery of her extensive work made her a big name in American street photography almost instantly. Another fun name to look up is Weegee. Weegee did a lot of his street photography at night with a 4×5 press camera. That deserves mad props IMHO.

I have dabbled in street photography but it’s been some time since I’ve tried my hand at it. Last year in Chicago I snapped a couple quick shots of a protest I passed. I’ll have to find those. I think I developed them but haven’t printed any yet. If you want my $0.02 a great film camera for starting street photography is a Konica BigMini. They are two models of the camera. One with a zoom lens and another with a fixed 35mm. Both are great considering they’re point-n-shoot cameras. another good one is the Olympus XA. A tiny 35mm rangefinder it’s great for keeping tucked in a pocket though focus and aperture can be a bit fiddly. Best to preset and just wing it. If you want to stand back and shoot, any old SLR with a Vivitar Sieries 1 70-200mm zoom will server you well. With a beast like that someone will notice you eventually. It sticks out like a turd in punchbowl.